Michael Dukakis for President 1988 | |
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Campaign | 1988 Democratic primaries 1988 U.S. presidential election |
Candidate | Michael Dukakis 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts (1975–1979, 1983–1991) Lloyd Bentsen U.S. Senator from Texas (1971–1993) |
Affiliation | Democratic Party |
Status | Announced: March 16, 1987 Presumptive nominee: June 7, 1988 Official nominee: July 21, 1988 Lost election: November 8, 1988 |
Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts |
Key people | Susan Estrich (campaign manager) Paul Brountas (campaign chair) [1] John Sasso (campaign manager; resigned on October 1, 1987; returned as vice chairman on September 3, 1988) [2] [3] Paul Tully (political director; resigned on October 1, 1987) [2] Donna Brazile (deputy field director; resigned on October 20, 1988) |
Slogan | We're on your side Good jobs at good wages Because the Best America has yet to Come |
The 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis began when he announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States on March 16, 1987, in a speech in Boston. After winning the nomination, he was formally selected as the Democratic Party's nominee at the party's convention in Atlanta, Georgia on July 21, 1988. [4] [5] He lost the 1988 election to his Republican opponent George H. W. Bush, who was the sitting Vice President at the time. Dukakis won 10 states and the District of Columbia, receiving a total of 111 electoral votes compared to Bush's 426 (Dukakis would have received 112, but one faithless elector who was pledged to him voted for Lloyd Bentsen for president and Dukakis for vice president instead out of protest). Dukakis received 45% of the popular vote to Bush's 53%. [6] Many commentators blamed Dukakis' loss on the embarrassing photograph of him in a tank taken on September 13, 1988, which subsequently formed the basis of a successful Republican attack ad. [7] [8] Much of the blame was also laid on Dukakis' campaign, which was criticized for being poorly managed despite being well funded. [9] [10] Had Dukakis been elected, he would have been the first Greek American president, the first Eastern Orthodox president, the first Eastern European American president, and the second governor of Massachusetts to accomplish this feat (after Calvin Coolidge). Bentsen would have been the second senator from Texas to be elected vice president, after Lyndon B. Johnson.
Michael Dukakis was the 65th and 67th governor of Massachusetts, from 1975 to 1979 and 1983 to 1991. His running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, was a U.S. senator from Texas, and a member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance who had previously run for the Democratic nomination in 1976.
On March 16, 1987, Dukakis, then the Governor of Massachusetts, gave what has become known as the "Marathon Speech" in Boston in which he hinted that he was running for president in next year's election. He formally announced that he would run in a speech given the following month. [4] Previously, he had been urged to consider running for president by Mario Cuomo, who had dropped out the previous month. [11] [12] This made him the third declared Democratic candidate for the 1988 election, after Richard A. Gephardt and Bruce Babbitt. Dukakis soon received an outpouring of support from voters throughout the country, which reportedly resulted in him receiving more attention than even he had expected. [13]
By May 1988, Dukakis had become the Democratic Party's front-runner for their nomination in that year's election, thanks to his victories in the New York and Pennsylvania primaries. [14] On June 7, 1988, Dukakis clinched the Democratic Party's nomination by winning all four of the party's last primaries against Jesse Jackson, the only other remaining Democratic candidate at the time. These victories gave Dukakis significantly more delegates than the 2,081 required to win the nomination. [15]
Dukakis' campaign was focused on his experience as Governor of Massachusetts, during which time Massachusetts had emerged from an economic depression and had become a "bastion of prosperity and full employment". [18] Commentators had described this as the "Massachusetts Miracle", a term Bush dismissed as the "Massachusetts mirage". [19]
On July 12, 1988, Dukakis announced he had chosen Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate, in the hopes of garnering more support in the South. [20] Dukakis compared his pick to John F. Kennedy's pick of Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate in the 1960 election. [21] As a result, his ticket became known as the "Boston-Austin axis", as Bentsen himself described it. [22] [23] Shortly after Dukakis made the pick, a Time cover story dubbed Dukakis and Bentsen "the odd couple", and Richard Stengel noted in 1988 that Bentsen was "...more Bush's twin than Dukakis'". [24] James J. Kilpatrick called the pair "The Sominex Twins". [25]
After winning the primaries in 30 states against Jesse Jackson and Al Gore, Dukakis accepted the Democratic Party's nomination at the 1988 Democratic National Convention on July 21, 1988, where Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton formally nominated Dukakis. [9]
During the campaign, Dukakis was the target of several now-infamous attack ads by individuals supporting the Bush campaign, most infamously the "Willie Horton" ad produced by the pro-Bush National Security Political Action Committee. Although the Bush campaign disavowed the ad, [26] it still played a major role in Dukakis' defeat. [27] The Dukakis campaign was mired in confusion during the general election, as exemplified by "the Handlers", a series of unintentionally confusing commercials that the campaign produced and aired at a cost of $3 million. Dukakis also erred in not responding to the Horton attack until late in the campaign. [28]
On October 20, 1988, Donna Brazile resigned from her role as deputy field director for the Dukakis campaign after saying that Bush needed to "fess up" about a rumor that he had had an extramarital affair. Her comments were also disavowed by the campaign, and Dukakis personally apologized to Bush for them at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner that year. [29]
A poll conducted on July 21 and 22 of 1988 found that Dukakis had expanded the size of his lead over Bush to 17 points, with 55% of voters surveyed saying they would prefer Dukakis to win, compared to 38% for Bush. [30] His lead soon began to shrink, however. For example, on July 30, Dukakis criticized the Reagan administration's handling of ethical issues, [31] to which Ronald Reagan himself responded by describing Dukakis as an "invalid", after which his poll numbers dropped by 5 points overnight. [7] By August 11, Dukakis' lead over Bush had shrunk to 7 points, [32] and by August 24, Bush had gained a 4-point lead over Dukakis. Of the dramatic shift in Dukakis' poll numbers, Mervin Field said, "I have never seen anything like this, this kind of swing in favorability ratings, ever since I have seen polls, going back to 1936." [33] Later that year, after the second Bush-Dukakis debate occurred on October 13, Dukakis' numbers dropped by 7 points that night, largely due to his response to a question about whether he would support the death penalty for someone if they raped and murdered his wife, Kitty Dukakis, being perceived as emotionless by voters (although others considered the question inherently unfair). [34] [35]
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Transitions | ||
Planned transitions | ||
Related | ||
A presidential transition was contingently planned from President Reagan to Dukakis.
Dukakis' transition planning efforts' activities were largely undertaken in secrecy. [36] In September 1988, awareness arose of active transition planning when the campaign filed paperwork to establish a Massachusetts nonprofit corporation named "Dukakis Transition '88". [36]
The transition planning was formally chaired by campaign chairman Paul Brountas. [36] However, Marcia Hale was overseeing much of the effort out of an office in Boston. [36] One of the individuals involved in the transition planning was Harrison Wellford, who had been involved in the pre-election transition planning of Jimmy Carter in 1976, and would later go on to play a role in the presidential transition of Bill Clinton. [37]
In September, campaign spokesman Mark Gearan stated, "It's a very quiet operation housed separately from the campaign. [36]
Despite having a pre-election transition planning effort of their own, the Bush campaign took a shot at Dukakis for having a transition effort, with Bush spokesperson Mark Goodin remarking, "As usual, they have the cart before the horse. If they spend less time planning for transition and more time campaigning, they would not be behind in the polls. Our position is you need to win the election before you worry about the transition." [36]
If Dukakis had won, he would not only have participated in a presidential transition, but also a gubernatorial transition –as he would have transitioned out of the Massachusetts governorship and handed over that position to his lieutenant governor Evelyn Murphy. [36] Had he won, he would have been the first sitting governor to transition into the presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932. [36]
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1988. The Republican Party's ticket of incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush and Indiana senator Dan Quayle defeated the Democratic ticket of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen.
Michael Stanley Dukakis is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history and only the second Greek-American governor in U.S. history, after Spiro Agnew. He was nominated by the Democratic Party for president in the 1988 election, losing to the Republican nominee, Vice President George H. W. Bush.
Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. was an American politician who was a four-term United States Senator (1971–1993) from Texas and the Democratic Party nominee for vice president in 1988 on the Michael Dukakis ticket. He also served as the 69th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton.
William R. Horton, commonly referred to as "Willie Horton", is an American convicted murderer who was the subject of a major political controversy in the 1988 presidential election. Horton had committed violent crimes while on furlough from prison, where he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder. Released for a weekend as the beneficiary of a Massachusetts furlough program, he failed to return, and was later recaptured and convicted of committing assault, armed robbery, and rape in Maryland, where he remains incarcerated.
The 1988 Democratic National Convention was held at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia, from July 18 to 21, 1988, to select candidates for the 1988 presidential election. At the convention Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts was nominated for president and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for vice president. The chair of the convention was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Jim Wright.
The 1988 United States Senate elections were elections for the United States Senate. Held on November 8, 1988, the 33 seats of Class 1 were contested in regular elections. In spite of the Republican victory by George H. W. Bush in the presidential election, the Democrats gained a net of 1 seat in the Senate. 7 seats changed parties, with 4 incumbents being defeated. The Democratic majority in the Senate increased by one to 55–45.
"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" was a remark made during the 1988 United States vice presidential debate by Democratic nominee Senator Lloyd Bentsen to Republican nominee Senator Dan Quayle in response to Quayle's comparison of his experience in Congress to that of John F. Kennedy, the Democratic 35th president of the United States, whom Bentsen knew from their time as congressmen from the 80th to 82nd Congresses. Since then, the words "You're no Jack Kennedy," or some variation on the remark, have become a part of the political lexicon as a way to deflate politicians or other individuals perceived as thinking too highly of themselves. Michael Dukakis and Bentsen later went on to lose the 1988 United States presidential election to George H. W. Bush and Quayle, who thus succeeded Bush as vice president of the United States.
From February 8 to June 14, 1988, voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for president in the 1988 United States presidential election. Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1988 Democratic National Convention held from July 18 to July 21, 1988, in Atlanta, Georgia.
From January 14 to June 14, 1988, Republican voters chose their nominee for president in the 1988 United States presidential election. Incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1988 Republican National Convention held from August 15 to August 18, 1988, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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The 1970 United States Senate election in Texas was held on November 3, 1970. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough was defeated by former U.S. Representative Lloyd Bentsen in the Democratic primary. Bentsen then defeated Republican U.S. Representative and future president George H. W. Bush in the general election. When Bush was running for president in 1988, his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, selected Bentsen as his vice presidential running mate.
The 1988 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 8, 1988. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1988 United States presidential election. Voters chose 16 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president. New Jersey was won by incumbent Republican Vice President George H. W. Bush of Texas, who was running against Democratic Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Bush ran with Indiana Senator Dan Quayle while Dukakis ran with Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen.
The 1988 United States presidential election in Texas took place on November 8, 1988. All fifty states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1988 United States presidential election. Texas voters chose 29 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.
This article lists those who were potential candidates for the Democratic nomination for Vice President of the United States in the 1988 election. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis won the 1988 Democratic nomination for President of the United States, and chose Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate. Dukakis chose Bentsen in order to appeal to Southerners and in hopes of carrying Bentsen's home state of Texas. The strategy failed, as the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket went on to lose Texas and all other states in the South except West Virginia. The choice of Bentsen caused some backlash from Jesse Jackson, who had wanted to be chosen as the vice presidential nominee, and progressives such as Ralph Nader. Paul Brountas, a longtime Dukakis aide, led the search for Dukakis's running mate. The Dukakis–Bentsen ticket ultimately lost to the Bush–Quayle ticket in the general election. Bentsen simultaneously ran for reelection as Senator, and easily won, despite the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket's double-digit loss in Texas.
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...Horton...became a decisive part of George H.W. Bush's campaign against Democratic contender Michael Dukakis.